


A Captain’s principles

by Caladenia



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caladenia/pseuds/Caladenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if it had been only a certain Captain’s principles that would have gotten them home. A very dark AU with a twist at the end which lightens the whole thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

* * *

It took them less than three years to abandon all hope of getting back home.

The Accident, as they called it, happened a few months after the Caretaker had hurled Voyager into the Delta Quadrant. It inflicted devastating damage to both crew and ship. Voyager limped to a godforsaken space station for spare parts and resources. On the edge of nowhere, it took them six weeks to repair the ship, stripping it of some of its technology, including the EMH, as high tech was the sole trading currency. Tuvok had interjected, stating Starfleet protocols but the captain was not seeking his advice. He was told to accept the senior team’s decision or leave the ship. He stayed, silenced.

A succession of navigational errors due to sub-standard replacement sensors put them off course. Failed negotiations for space routes followed as they tried to bully their way through too many territories. Lost battles added to the death toll, Kes and Vorik among the casualties. Voyager’s company continued to shrink as crew members disappeared during overdue shore leaves on seedy trade posts. With resources dwindling, nobody on the ship was keen on spending time chasing after deserters.

After a year and a half, they finally got back on track thanks to more compromises and dodgy deals arranged by their Talaxian guide and approved by the captain. Without much to exchange, they used their skills and genetic material for trade this time. Volunteers and disgruntled crew members were left behind as part of the exchanged goods, Voyager’s pilot among them. Tom Paris had been lucky to be left on a planet with a breathable atmosphere after the enraged players he had swindled threatened to kick him out of an airlock without a space suit.

The ship plunged further towards the galaxy's centre, along the space-time curve linking the two quadrants. The crew began to hear warnings of a massive territory stretching for hundreds of light years ahead. Millions of Borg cubes were lying straight across their path, waiting to turn them into ruthless and efficient drones.  
Following a tempestuous meeting of the senior staff, during which B’Elanna Torres hit the captain who demoted her to Crewman Third Class, the decision was taken to wait and see if a stronger species would take on the Borg for them. Like a fly banging against a window trying to reach the light on the other side, Voyager bounced around the perimeter of Borg territory for several months, overly cautious in their dread of assimilation.

Nobody challenged the Borg on the ship’s behalf.

There was no course across and too long a way around. The senior team would not commit to a decision, so lengthy debates run the length of the ship over whether or not to settle in the Delta Quadrant. The pro-settlement side consolidated its position over multiple ballots. After the sixth poll, a delegation approached the senior staff to lobby them to follow the majority opinion: 75 in favour of settling down and 12 votes against looked like a clear-cut result to the crew.

Retracing its path, Voyager flew from system to system, its crew attempting to find a permanent base for themselves. They contacted one planetary government after another, asking for permanent settlement in exchange for their technical and combat expertise. However, their reputations for underhand tactics and dubious principles preceded them. They finally bribed their way through lowly ranked border officials who had only enough influence to smuggle small groups planetside. The crew ended up on separate systems, unable - or unwilling — to stick together as one. Tuvok, Kim and Neelix were among the first to disembark.

The ship touched down for the last time on a pre-warp planet, the Prime Directive well and truly ignored with Earth out of reach. By then, only a few crewmembers were still left on board, the captain still at the helm. Thirty-six months after being flung in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager’s hope of going back home finally collapsed, its crew dispersed or dead, its legend never written.

 

* * *

 “When did you realise we had given up?” asked Chakotay one evening, a cup of local tea in his hands. He could just see Voyager nestled in the valley below. The ship had long been gutted of all her components, except for the hull and landing gear. She still looked magnificent.

B’Elanna was sitting beside him, contemplating the star-studded night sky. This close to the galaxy centre, stars were as dense as pebbles on a beach.  
“Soon after the Accident," she responded, accepting his use of the collective pronoun.

Chakotay turned towards her, his face illuminated by the starlights. There was no need for a moon on this world. “But we continued towards Earth for more than two years after that. We didn't think about settling down for quite some time.”

“With Janeway’s gone, we sort of lost our bearings,” she observed.

Chakotay snorted. “Our bearings? You mean Starfleet principles? Rules and codes of conduct? Remember when Tuvok tried to stop us from selling bits of Voyager’s technology in the name of Starfleet protocols? We had the right to pull him down. We would have never survived if we had followed the Starfleet rulebook. Even Harry realised that fast enough.”

She sipped on her cup. She knew why Harry had seemed to quickly accept the new rules that governed Voyager after the Accident. Or more to the point, the lack of rules. Just like everyone else on the ship, he had had to adapt to a new leadership, a mere few months into the ultimately failed journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. No wonder Harry had left as early as he could. He had not wanted to have anything to do with the remaining Senior Officers once his dream of returning to Earth had been well and truly abandoned.

B’Elanna studied her captain. She could feel his weariness. He was tired, his hair greying on the sides, his face showing hard lines and a few faint scars here and there: a reminder of past battles, too many to recall. Not that much different from what she looked like.

“I know something, Chakotay. Janeway was not following Starfleet principles because they were Starfleet. After all, she did take a few liberties at times. She acted the way she did because it was the right thing to do. It was so ingrained in her, no matter what quadrant she was in.”  
The half-Klingon woman continued, a sad tone in her voice.  
“We failed to see that, Chakotay. We thought we could just replace her with a new captain, change some rules and everything would be okay. But we didn't grasp the consequences of our choices. When we reacted instinctively to one problem, we created the next crisis, and the one after that. We lost our way.” And half of the crew, she thought.

He did not seem to have heard her last words. “And what about Klingon principles? She died in a Jefferies tube for spirit’s sake, trying to get the environmental controls back on line. Hardly a warrior’s glorious death.“

“What’s your problem, Chakotay?” B’Elanna got up, now angry. “Trying to justify the decisions we took? Do you think we would have received a hero’s welcome if we had managed to get back to the Alpha Quadrant all by ourselves? We would have been court-martialled and sent to a penal colony not because of our Maquis past but because of the way we’ve acted over the past three years. You know that. She was our captain for a few months but we failed to understand what she was trying to do. To get us home without succumbing to the savagery of this quadrant. To be proud of not just getting back to the Alpha Quadrant but of how we conducted ourselves during the journey. That was what was important to her and should have been to us too.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me like that before?” Chakotay asked, lifting his head at her.

The Engineer smiled ruefully, sitting back down, her anger already spent. “At first, I did not think what we were doing was wrong. After all, it had worked well when we were in the Maquis. You know, taking short cuts, grasping opportunities, threading our way through. When it begun to dawn on me that the path we had chosen was as much the problem as our ennemies were, I tried to warn you. Several times. The last time I did, you sent me to scrub the manifolds with a toothbrush, remember? My fault, I suppose. I exploded.”

Chakotay remained silent for a while. “Do you think Voyager would have made it back to the Alpha Quadrant if she had lived?” he asked wistfully, looking back at the ship.

B’Elanna laughed softly. “I think that woman might have just been the one to bring us home.” She cupped her hands around the distant lifeless ship and moved them upwards through the night sky. “I can see Voyager still racing towards the Alpha Quadrant with her as the captain and you as the second-in-command. It would have taken a long time, but, yes, I believe she would have gotten us back. The whole of us.“

They sat outside a while longer, reflecting on what they had lost. Then Chakotay stood up, emptying his cup on the ground.  
“You know the hardest thing of all, B’Elanna?” His voice was now only a whisper. “I cannot remember her face anymore.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for the twist ...

A headache the size of a warp core was pulsating behind her forehead. She felt like she had just sat through one of Tom Paris’ movie marathons, watching six ‘what if’ scenarios becoming more and more depressing as the night went on. This last one had been the worse of the whole lot.

She has died early in all of them: twice shot (lots of blood, for effect she guessed. Phasers did not leave much blood behind), one accident (painful but quick), two cases of lingering and rather nasty looking diseases, and one instance of… Well, let’s say that one had been rather messy.

The novelty of her untimely demise had worn off by the third iteration but it was the fate of the crew which saddened her the most. She could accept the ship getting blown up by overwhelming alien forces or encountering spatial anomalies strong enough to tear it apart, but she had never anticipated a set of circumstances that would leave a dispirited and disillusioned crew scattered all over the Delta Quadrant in such a short period of time. And they had not even tried that hard to reach home.

“All right Q, I’ve had enough. I give up.” She made a bee line to the replicator. “Coffee, black.”

She turned towards him, a steaming cup in her hands. Q was looking as chirpy as ever, wearing a Starfleet Admiral uniform with his usual panache and sprawled on the couch of her ready room. His smart look was slightly marred by a mountain of popcorn spilt over his stomach.

Not for the first time during the evening, Janeway wished she had his powers to make him go away. “What were all these fictional tales about and more importantly, what do you want?” she asked instead.

“Kathryn, my dear Kathryn. And I thought we were having such a good time, just the two of us, smooching and…” Janeway gave him a death glare which had no such effect on him but stopped his ramblings. “We were not smooching, Q. What do you want?”

He sat up, the popcorn gone and a glass of red wine in his hand instead. He patted the cushion beside him in a silent invitation for her to sit down. Shaking her head, she demurred. He settled with what he hoped was an earnest look on his face.

“Kathryn, have you ever thought about the impact you are having on the Delta Quadrant?”

Janeway was taken by surprise at his change of tack. The question had some merit though. “I hope we are not having too much of an impact. The Prime Directive…”

“The Prime Directive. A very interesting concept, that PD of yours.” He noticed Janeway was stifling a yawn. “OK, I’ll explain the whole thing. You humans are so slow witted, it is hard for me to come down to your speed of thoughts.”

The Captain did not rise to the bait and moved to settle on the couch near him. He felt rather pleased at her confidence in his good manners until he thought that it just showed she manifestly thought him inoffensive. Then he marvelled at how he had expertly been tricked into behaving exactly how Janeway wanted him to conduct himself: safe and harmless.

This captain was certainly different from Jean-Luc: more chutzpah, less rigid and definitely much better looking for a human. If only she was not treating him like an unwelcome if slightly eccentric relative. Oh well, the night was young and anyway he had a serious message to pass on.

“As you know, we, the Q, are, in a way, in charge of this universe”, he started to say with a flourish of hands. Janeway almost choked on her coffee and looked at him with an incredulous look on her face. “You don’t say, Q. A nice job you are doing of it.”

“Well, that’s the problem”, he added, looking embarrassed. “Sometimes our actions end up having unwanted consequences.”

Her eyebrow lifted up.

“We try to correct a problem, which from time to time lead to other problems which in turn, very occasionally of course, end up not quite the way we wanted. Starting from scratch again gets a bit tiresome, so we lose interest and things snowball from there. We are omnipotent, not omniscient.” He hated sounding so defensive in front of a lower life form but he needed her.

“You are losing me, Q.”

“Oh, come on. Even your Earthling philosophers have been debating this paradox for centuries. What do they teach you at the Academy nowadays?”

She noticed he had changed his clothing to a subdued and less aggravating long robe. He wanted something from Voyager very badly. Or from her.

“For various reasons that your species does not need to know, the Q continuum has an interest in making this particular galaxy less, well, disorganised. We have been observing the Federation for the past few centuries and we are pleased with what it has accomplished. We would like something similar to happen in what you call the Delta Quadrant, and….”

Janeway interrupted him. She was getting an inkling of what he was talking about even if the real reasons were not clear. “You want Voyager to foster the creation of a federation of planets, based on the principles that nurtured it in the Alpha Quadrant. A tall order, even for the Q.”

He smiled, rather happy with himself to have picked the right Captain. Picard would already have cast his Klingon bulldog at him at the first interlude. “Well, you can’t pretend that Voyager has not had a good influence on this area of space. You have touched so many species already.” He had forgotten their names but she would fill in the blanks.

“However …,” he lingered. She lifted another eyebrow. “However, have you noticed a pattern in the scenarios I showed you?”

 _“There_ ,” she thought. “ _These scenarios, as he calls them, they mean something to him. But what?”_

She was intrigued and uneasy. Something was telling her that she may not want to hear why he was so interested in Voyager. And the reasons of an omnipotent being were very likely to be extremely difficult to fight off.

He did not wait for her answer and went straight to the point. “You, Kathryn Janeway, Captain of the Federation starship Voyager, die in each of them, and your ship does not last long after that. If you die too early while stranded in the Delta Quadrant, the ship and its crew cease to exist as we know them. Even if your troops don’t kill themselves doing something stupid, they end up abandoning your Federation’s principles. Without Voyager’s pacifying influence, the whole idea of a federation of planets in this quadrant falls apart. This is not what we want.”

Janeway got up, feeling more and more concerned. “You are playing with me, Q. With us,” moving her arm around to encompass the whole of Voyager. “It will take decades for even the kernel of a pre-federation structure to appear. You want Voyager to stay in the Delta Quadrant forever, doing your bidding and never seeing home. It is not fair.” She looked at him, her blue eyes like steel. “Keep me here if you want, Q, but Voyager’s crew deserves to go home. Let them go back and I’ll help you create that federation of yours.”

Ah, yes, the famous chink in her armour. Personal sacrifice. A strange notion which Q did not quite understand himself, but it was so deeply embedded in her. She was both the answer to his problem and the more likely cause of failure. That sacrificial trait was such a large part of who she was and why she was a great Captain and hence why she would keep Voyager going, but it was also the issue: that she would sacrifice herself willingly for her crew meant she was more than likely to die much too early, before these Federation representatives made their mark on the Delta Quadrant. Most of the simulations he had run ended up the same way: without Janeway at the helm of the ship, there was no Voyager and not an inkling of a federation.

Q stood up and started pacing the room, talking with much arms thrown around. “I can’t do that, Kathryn. Something to do with free will, etc.. Very boring, but indispensable I am afraid. That’s the problem with omnipotence. Somehow, it has its limits, even if that sounds illogical. Ask your pointy-eared friend. Anyway, I can't interfere with you and your ship trying to go back to the Alpha Quadrant. All I need for you is to stay alive and frankly you haven’t been of much help on that front already. You go off investigating every spatial anomaly you can find, you explore every planet, you try and save every civilisation that could well do with trying to save themselves first. It’s a bit hard to know what you are going to do next which will not end up getting you killed.”

Janeway was getting angry and tired and pretty well sick of this creature trampling all over her ready room. She went back to the replicator to get a second cup of coffee, when a sudden thought made her turn around. “I am not real, am I? Otherwise you would not dare tell me any of this. There is no free will if I know your intentions. I am in one of your scenarios. You are studying the real captain by quizzing me. Isn’t it true?” She was standing just under his chin now, eyes blazing and her index finger poking his chest. “And this has nothing to do with the Q continuum, not directly anyway. It is all about you.”

She took a step back, smirking at him. “You have been told to behave, to pacify the Delta Quadrant as a test of you, not of me.” She laughed at the misery showing on his face.

Even as an avatar of a little insignificant mortal being, she was annoyingly right. He erased her, leaving him alone in the simulated room.

* * *

 

He had failed. Alas, this was another scenario bringing nothing. The Delta Quadrant would stay wild and uncontrollable for many more centuries and his head would roll, even if only figuratively.

He sat down feeling rather sorry for himself. If he could just mimic the broken tone of that large lump of a guy at the end of the last Voyager’s scenes they had watched, the holographic captain and him, maybe that would get him off the hook with the other Q. The big oaf had done a good impression of sounding heart broken, way too late of course to save her....

Q ‘s head lifted up, eyes bright and a large smile showing. He was having an epiphany. That chap was the solution he was after. Forget trying to convince Janeway to stay alive. She had no sense of self-preservation. Instead, all he needed to focus on was that commander of hers, the one with the graffiti on the side of his face. These humans can be very protective of whom they care for.

_I’ll start by stranding the two of them on an uninhabited planet for a few weeks. That should do the trick._

He clicked his fingers and everything disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on fanfiction.net under a different pseudonym.   
> I was very lucky to have Mrs Singing Violin as my beta for the first chapter of what was at the time my second Voyager story. My greatest thanks for her keen eyes for illogical statements and deep knowledge of Voyager canon. What remains is my personal interpretation of what could have happened.


End file.
